A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.
quote by Howard Hodgkin

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Each painting has its own way of evolving...When the painting is finished, the subject reaveals itself.
quote by William Baziotes

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When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it - a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand - as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it's bad art.
quote by Marc Chagall

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When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If theres a clash between the two, its bad art.
quote by Marc Chagall

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It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it.
quote by Jeff Melvoin

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Painting The Walls
painting the walls,
rolling over handprints,
cobwebs, and smoke stains....
over splashes of color,
over peels of time.
painting over the sounds
of voices whispering, laughing....
painting over tears hidden
from the world, from each other.
painting over running, and working,
working all day and half the night.
painting over children, and dreams,
folded like old clothes, and put away.
painting over notes from God,
that were often barely noticed...
painting over the nail that held
up the clock, hands moving slowly,
turning the seasons of living....
painting over the final words,
the last breath held in the hands,
of lives written in the grain....
the testimony of each feeling....
painting the walls,
and brushing the corners,
as if we never lived!
poem by Eric Cockrell

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I hope to actually get back to painting someday... soon. I sort of transitioned into cartooning from painting.
quote by Max Cannon

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Most painting in the European tradition was painting the mask. Modern art rejected all that. Our subject matter was the person behind the mask.
quote by Robert Motherwell

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Modesty is high in view.
A painting free of cost;
A painting with a tag;
A painting not for sale;
The third soars high in view.
24.10.2012
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar

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Artist Only
I'm painting, I'm painting again.
I'm painting, I'm painting again.
I'm cleaning, I'm cleaning again.
I'm cleaning, I'm cleaning my brain.
Pretty soon now, I will be bitter.
Pretty soon now, will be a quitter.
Pretty soon now, I will be bitter.
You can't see it 'til it's finished
I don't have to prove...that I am creative!
I dont' have to prove...that I am creative!
All my pictures are confused
And now I'm going to take me to you
song performed by by Talking Heads

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I needed an outlet in high school and came across painting. I've actually been painting longer than I've been acting. A movie is a collaborative effort, and with painting you just have yourself.
quote by James Franco

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But when I worked on a painting I would do it from a drawing but I would put certain things I was fairly sure I wanted in the painting, and then collage on the painting with printed dots or painted paper or something before I really committed it.
quote by Roy Lichtenstein

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Unpainted Painting
Unpainted Painting.
I found a painting on the dump by the road, heads of many colours
seeking shelter, under a colourful umbrella, against coming storm.
It is an original painting signed and dated 2052, who threw it away?
A black fly walks across the computer screen, when I shush it away
it only indolently moves and settles on the edge of the virtual page.
I look for a newspaper to swat it the devious fly reads my thought,
take lift and disappear Into the painting. Now I can read the name:
FEMA. I got, it the date, the work is not yet made by an artist not yet
born; I’m seeing into a future and if the sad faces are anything to go
by, it doesn’t look too promising. Before the darkness swirled into
the village I put the picture back on the dump, as it wasn’t painted
yet and not for me to see. The black fly was buzzing around my head
whispering words in a in a future language I shall never comprehend
In the morning dustmen came and took away the trash.
poem by Oskar Hansen

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After tea it's back to painting - a large poplar at dusk with a gathering storm. From time to time instead of this evening painting session I go bowling in one of the neighbouring villages, but not very often.
quote by Gustav Klimt

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Artists Only
Im painting, Im painting again.
Im painting, Im painting again.
Im cleaning, Im cleaning again.
Im cleaning, Im cleaning my brain.
Pretty soon now, I will be bitter.
Pretty soon now, will be a quitter.
Pretty soon now, I will be bitter.
You cant see it til its finished
I dont have to prove...that I am creative!
I dont have to prove...that I am creative!
All my pictures are confused
And now Im going to take me to you.
song performed by by Talking Heads

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Why I Am Not A Painter
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.
poem by Frank O'Hara

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When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.
quote by Paul Cezanne

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Don't let that horse
Don't let that horse
eat that violin
cried Chagall's mother
But he
kept right on
painting
And became famous
And kept on painting
The Horse With Violin In Mouth
And when he finally finished it
he jumped up upon the horse
and rode away
waving the violin
And then with a low bow gave it
to the first naked nude he ran across
And there were no strings
attached
poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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December 7
As I sit at my desk wishing
I did not have to edit a book
on poetry and painting a
subject that fascinates me
usually, but today is not as
usual, being today, white sky,
decent amount of sunlight,
forty one degrees in Central Park,
and it makes sense to dream of
Chicago, another big city
with two major league ballclubs,
and the pleasure of seeing Paul
and you, too, Elaine, whom
I never get to see often enough
in our own city of the subway series
the champagne gallery and
the tech wreck on wall street,
and as I look out the window
almost any minute I expect
the brokers to fall from the sky
like Icarus in Brughel's painting in
Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts"
(and so back to work)
poem by David Lehman

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Sometimes I imagine
Sometimes I imagine
that my D Jacobs painting
of a red brown earth road
that in winter
runs through the yellow green veldt
past a few oak and blue gum trees
to the purple blue mountains
in the distance
is a Pierneef,
but what draws it nearer to me,
is that I almost feel
the sand beneath me feet,
can smell the tussocks of grass,
try to catch the shades of the trees
one by one,
see a graveyard
in the distance next to
a few bushes,
look at the bright blue sky
and get emotionally involved
with this painting
as it brings my childhood days
back to me
and it jumps right
into my heart.
[Reference: Painting by D Jacobs that belongs to me.]
poem by Gert Strydom

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When I'm painting the picture, I'm really painting a picture. I may have a flat-footed technique, or something like that, but still, to me, the thrill, or the meat of the thing, is the actual painting. I don't get any thrill out of laying it out.
quote by Frank Stella

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